This past weekend, Julie and I went up to San Francisco to fulfill my birthday present for her. I said I would get her a messenger bag, but it was important that we find the right bag that would work for her and hopefully last a lifetime. SF is home to Chrome Industries, Timbuk2, and Mission Workshop, so we made a walking day trip out of the store visits around the city. We planned out our route, major stops, and meals, but a big part of these day trips are the unexpected parts, like seeing the Dalai Lama.
On our walk from Uniqlo in the Union Square area to Timbuk2 in Hayes Valley, we passed by the Symphony Hall on the other side of the street where we saw people standing around with signs. As we approached, the letters cleared up to a most surprising protest target: the Dalai Lama. I asked a guy standing on our side what was going on.
“The Dalai Lama is coming out of that door,” he replied.
“Soon?” He nodded in response.
I looked over at Julie, and we agreed that we could wait to see the Dalai Lama. There were a few false alarms when other suited security members walked in and out of the musician’s entrance door. We were amused by an enthusiastic passer-by who happened to carry dog treats in her purse and dog owners who were more permissive of random food than the dog itself.
Several minutes after the police has blocked off the street and the 3 black Suburbans had started their engines, we saw a figure robed in orange emerge from the door. The protesters immediately began their not-so-religious chanting: a call-and-response from a guy on a speakerphone. The first monk went into the first Suburban, but then another monk appeared and went into the second Suburban.
I had seen the Dalai Lama once in real life, and though I couldn’t remember it that well, I was pretty sure that neither of the monks were him. Then, the giant rolling garage door opened, and we saw the feet of more security guys. Behind it, we saw 2 more black cars, which pulled out as soon as possible. They drove off with the rest of the convoy, and I only got to maybe see the Dalai Lama through a tinted car window.
As Julie and I continued our walk, we joked about the “decoy monk” strategy by security. Obviously nothing went wrong with security, but had something happened, it was a pretty clever strategy. Were it, say, George Clooney, it’s somewhat difficult to fake a George Clooney. With the Dalai Lama, however, it’s probably not unlikely that there were more people like me who just know that he’s an old Tibetan guy.
When we planned our trip to the city, we did plan to have a delicious brunch in SoMa somewhere. We didn’t plan to see the Dalai Lama, or to almost see the Dalai Lama, or to see the Dalai Lama impersonators who actually look nothing like the Dalai Lama. We did plan to pick up socks from a shop in the Mission. We didn’t plan to get into a discussion with a Spanish storekeeper about the ethics of eating meat.
In fact, we weren’t even planning to go as of dinnertime the evening before. When Julie told me that her weekend was comparatively light, I off-handedly asked if she wanted to do this day trip to the city, and she agreed. I myself wasn’t actually so resolved to go up, so I hesitated in that moment: I had sketched out the day, but I didn’t have a route or specific stops in mind. Of course, it was only a matter of looking at a map and train schedules, so we figured out the details there.
Had we not decided to go then, however, I’m not sure when we would have gotten around to the trip. I have drifted back and forth on the best way to figure out the best things to do. When I was gung-ho about planning, we ended up waking up early on weekends and rushing to hit train schedules to maximize our time. When I relaxed, we ended up sitting around at home and not getting out there.
Like with many things, it seems the best methods are somewhere in-between and dependent on the situation. In this case, it took the right amount of planning to assemble an exciting itinerary and spontaneity to get out and do it. And the trip itself worked out with both the intended stops and unexpected encounters. I’ll have to stay both intentional and open-minded in the future.